“He wanted us to come back with him,” she said tersely. “But Arkasha’s sick. I really don’t know what’s wrong, and I didn’t want to take him on any complicated journeys. I was hoping that our physician would return—I had such faith in Dr. Fröhlich!” Her eyes filled with tears of despair, and all at once, pathetically, she began to cry. “But it was such a mistake! Fröhlich won’t be back now, not with the military commandeering all the trains. I should have risked a journey as far as Switzerland. There’s a specialist in Lausanne of whom I’ve been hearing—a Dr. Combes, who is even more well known than Fröhlich. He’s a pioneer in children’s diseases.”
Examining the baby, Pierre said in a stilted voice: “He’s so like you, isn’t he? Boris should never have abandoned him—abandoned you.”
“I’m afraid I won’t fight you on this,” she whispered. “I’m so tired of being brave, and I’m not noble and good and heroic. I’m angry, and I hurt. You’ve no idea how much I resent Russia for joining the war.” She tried to smile and quizzically regarded Pierre a moment. “Well?” she queried. “And why aren’t you doing your part for the Tzar and Mother Russia?”
“I don’t think this war will last,” Pierre replied. “It’s based on ridiculous premises. An archduke gets murdered, and the world is turned upside down. I was in The Hague—with Boris, in fact—in ‘07, and no one there wanted another war. I’m an artist, Natalia, not a fighter. I can’t kill Germans just because they carry a different passport. Among them might be a Strauss or a Goethe. My heart’s country is composed of creative people who do not waste their energies planning wars—or fighting in them. I’m not a hero, like your husband. And so I’m prepared to hole up here in the Künstler Kolonie until all this ends. They think I’m Swiss, anyway, so there’s little danger to me personally. No one would think to check on my papers.”
“Then your life is the simplest of all,” she commented softly. “But then it always was, wasn’t it? It never mattered to you how you achieved success, only that you obtained it. Perhaps you’re right. What difference will it make a hundred years from now whether or not you were considered a coward by your compatriots? Posterity will only remember you for your great works. At best, you’d make a mediocre soldier, wouldn’t you?”
“And at worst, a dead one,” he agreed. She had abruptly moved toward the carriage, her face turned away from him, the baby held against her chest. He helped her in, avoiding her eyes. But he could not remove his hand from the horse’s flank. Even with this child of another man’s lovemaking, he felt, deep inside, a surge of possession for her. She’s miserable and doesn’t want me, and he’d seduced her emotions in his customary underhanded manner—the manner of an evil genius who alchemizes gold for himself out of another man’s lead. But still, inexplicably, she belongs to me. A wave of anger and need passed over him. For a moment he almost jumped astride Olga in order to keep Natalia with him, but he restrained himself and stood aside as she gathered up the reins and drove away.
Pierre sat at his easel, working on a small reproduction of Natalia and Arkady. He had made a sketch of them after returning to his cottage, and now he felt compelled to complete it as a painting. He was angry and rebellious. Until Boris and Natalia he had been a person in his own right, a true artist, but for the last nine years he had been emotionally entangled and artistically enslaved, incapable of leading an independent life. Now he could not function without thinking of his patrons, without their interfering in his life.
Of course, Natalia was right; he had only himself to blame. He had selected his obsession and allowed it to engulf him. He could have parted from Boris in the very beginning. But Boris had shown him a tray of delights, tokens of an irresistible life, and Pierre, although resenting the offering and the obligation it incurred, had not turned away. Boris had danced around him in elaborate courtship, and Pierre had watched, fascinated. He had hated Boris but eventually, he had been conquered by Boris’s charm, his brilliance, his money, his connections, and his way of life. Pierre was not guilt-free.
And Natalia? He’d chosen her, as Boris had chosen him. He had selfishly wanted her for himself. He’d felt betrayed by her rejection of him, but Boris had given her understanding and acceptance, which he had not—ever. In the end she had stopped loving him, Pierre, to love the man who had truly known her. Boris and Natalia had both left him because he had never tried to understand them. It hadn’t seemed important!
It was a bitter fact. Pierre set down his paintbrush and felt a knot in his throat, pain from behind his eyes. He was miserably alone and angry and could not work. An artist could not produce when his heart was trapped like a hermit in a cave. Somehow, he thought with self-deprecation, I have never loved anyone but Pierre Riazhin, and now no one else gives a damn about me.
The little baby. My God, what a heartrending sight, with his enormous brown eyes, his soft hair, his translucent and pathetic frailty! He was Natalia’s child—and the child of Boris Kussov. Still, Pierre did not want the child to die. Something had to be done.
Pierre rose then and put on his jacket. He would have to try to set his house in order, come what may.
It had been one month since he had seen Natalia. Now, when he entered the inn in Zwingenberg, having discovered Natalia’s whereabouts from some villagers, he could hardly think. His mind had given way to feelings of apprehension. Frau Walter seemed pleased that someone had come to visit “the Gräfin” and did not hesitate to show him the way to Natalia’s rooms. He cleared his throat and asked: ‘The baby? Is he better?”
Frau Walter looked away, and Pierre felt his stomach sink. “Fräulein Bernhardt doesn’t know what to do,” the innkeeper’s wife said in a muted whisper. “I’ve never seen a child go through such pain. He’s been vomiting for several days now and looks purplish blue in the face. I’m afraid even Dr. Fröhlich, bless his heart, would feel quite helpless. It would take one of the leading medical minds of the century to figure it out—and that’s what she thinks, too.”
“He’s that much worse?” Pierre asked in horror.
Frau Walter raised her brows and said nothing. They had arrived at the door to Natalia’s rooms, and now the innkeeper knocked and called out: “Gräfin! There’s a nice young man to see you, from Darmstadt.”
She turned the knob and he stood looking at Natalia, his lips parting. She was thinner than he’d ever seen her, and her face was haggard and colorless. She was wearing a housecoat and appeared disheveled, her hair falling haphazardly about her shoulders. The innkeeper had disappeared, and now Pierre took her hands, his heart in his throat. “You’re not well?” he murmured, tenderness coursing through him like hot liquid.
“I’m all right. Come in, Pierre.” She did not seem surprised to see him, only weary, past caring. Pinpricks of anxiety shivered over him, and he did not know what to say.
Sitting down, she rested her head in her hands. Her voice muffled by her fingers, she said: “I’ve decided, Pierre. We’re going to get out.”
“How, Natalia?”
She looked at him, resembling her son in her pallor and ethereal fragility. “I don’t know. I’ll work it out somehow. But Arkasha needs to go to Switzerland. It’s no longer a question of whether or not he can stand a train trip. There’s no choice: If he doesn’t get proper treatment from a specialist like Dr. Combes, he’ll die. It’s as simple as that.”
Her voice reverberated through him, its chilling matter-of-factness piercing through his emotions. He could not answer. She stood up listlessly. “I was such a fool,” she said softly, “not to have listened to reason months ago. But no, I was afraid of the voyage. Borya knew better.”
“If he did, then why didn’t he stay here with you and force you both to leave with him?” Pierre cried out.
She looked at him coldly. “I wouldn’t have gone,” she replied simply. “God knows he tried to make me.”
Pierre rose, and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Perhaps there’s something I can do,” he said finally. “Give m
e a few days.”
She smiled weakly. “You don’t have to, really. It was good of you to come, but we’ll manage.”
“I know. But I’d like to help.”
Before she could reply, Pierre abruptly turned and left the room. An idea had formed, merging with the image of the child and the young mother as he had drawn them from memory. He had to try, even if nothing in his life could be changed by his effort. Love had to mean more than wanting to possess. He had to learn whether he really did love Natalia.
The Baroness von Baylen folded her hands in her lap with haughty impatience. “Pierre Grigorievitch,” she said, “you wrote me about a problem. I have come. If you think it was easy—I had to take the car all the way from Berlin because the trains have been commandeered by the military.”
“I know, Marguerite Stepanovna. I am most grateful.” “You have already placed me in a most precarious position. My husband is with the War Ministry. I am only a German by marriage and this house is in my name. I could have had you interned months ago, and should have. Now, if you make one wrong move, people here will learn that you are Russian, and it is I who shall be interned as a traitor to my adopted country. My husband does not know that you are still here. When war broke out, I told him that you had not returned from a vacation in Switzerland. I am risking everything in order to protect your safety. What has gone wrong?”
“Don’t worry, everything here is all right. People have accepted me as a permanent fixture in the Künstler Kolonie. I come and go with nobody paying me the slightest attention.”
“At least that’s a relief.” Marguerite bit her lower lip and rubbed her hands together. She looked around the room. “All this,” she murmured somewhat breathlessly, “for a few paintings a year.”
Pierre winced. He knew exactly why the baroness had not revealed his identity at the outbreak of hostilities. There was no friendship between them. Neither of them, in fact, possessed any friends. Marguerite was very lonely, and her sponsorship of Pierre was the only reason why Berliners sought her out. True, her husband had an old aristocratic name and was well placed at the War Ministry; but now she had become a grande dame in her own right, a patroness. Probably she does not even like my work, and certainly she doesn’t understand it, he thought wryly. But she feels that she helped launch me among the German nobility. I am her new toy.
Yet, in spite of his bitterness, he felt sorry for her. She was like a rabbit, ferreting about for a sense of self that would forever elude her. She was spoiled and manipulative, but not very intelligent, and basically harmless. That a person like this had ever yearned for a life side by side with Boris Kussov… It seemed incredible. And yet, Pierre knew that after he had left Kiev in 1912, she had written to ask Countess Brianskaya details about him, and that Boris’s patronage of him had of course been mentioned. Marguerite had made up her mind then: She had to have Riazhin, to take something that had once belonged to her ex-husband.
So you too, he thought, cannot let go of the Kussov mystique. Aloud he said: “I know what trouble you went to on my account, Marguerite Stepanovna. Sometime soon my work will reward you. I have already begun two large canvases for either side of your mantelpiece in Berlin. I hope you will like them.”
He stood up, and she followed him into his workroom, where he pointed to a magnificent landscape of hills and valleys in full summer bloom. She had been thrown off-balance by his change of topic; She blinked, swallowed, and touched her topknot. “Yes,” she said, “it’s very pretty, Pierre Grigorievitch. The effect is overpowering—one can almost smell the flowers.”
He smiled. “Good. That’s what I’d planned.” He made a gesture for her to return to the drawing room, and she acquiesced, preceding him through the door. Only when they were seated once more did he begin to speak about what was on his mind.
“The problem isn’t with me, Marguerite Stepanovna. You have been most good to me. But there is someone else who is in trouble—a young woman, with a sick child. Like me, and like you, too, before your marriage, she is Russian. But she needs to go to Switzerland to consult a doctor there for her son.” He licked his lips, avoiding her pale blue gaze. “I thought, perhaps, you might be able to help her.”
Marguerite von Baylen stood up, overturning an ashtray on a small side table. Quick color surged to her cheekbones. “Pierre Grigorievitch, you must be mad!” she exclaimed. “I told you—my husband has no idea that you’re still here! Why should I help this woman? I don’t even know her! And how? What would you have me do?”
“I am certain that among your connections others have helped aliens in similar straits. She would need false papers and transportation. I did not know whom to ask but you. The situation is grave. Wouldn’t your husband, such a good man, have compassion?”
Marguerite began to laugh, the breathless, somewhat hysterical sound ricocheting off the walls of the room. “Pierre Grigorievitch, you are so naïve!” she cried. “To think that a member of the War Ministry would put his position on the line to help a total stranger! Truly, you know nothing of politics. My husband is kind, of course. But he has a job to do, and what you ask would be tantamount to betraying his country!”
“A small favor in the matter of a harmless woman and child would be nothing so serious as what you imply,” Pierre retorted, his own face flushing. He stood up and began to pace the room, pressing his fists to his sides. Finally he turned to her, his black eyes blazing. “Damn it!” he burst out, “have all decent human beings turned into stones now that some silly men with paper crowns have decided to play King of the Mountain? I’m talking to you about a pathetic child of seven months, a child who may not survive his illness unless he can reach Switzerland in time! And you speak to me of politics! For God’s sake, what is happening to everyone? Has the entire world gone berserk?”
She took a step backward, her thin lips stretching over her teeth in a grimace of nervous fear. She shook her head. “No! I can’t do anything! I won’t do anything! It’s bad enough for me, a native of Russia. In Berlin there are those who won’t receive me now because they consider me an enemy. It’s just the way it was in Kiev, when I returned—from there. Nobody wanted to have anything to do with me. I can’t have that—not again! Not for you. I shouldn’t have come, but I was afraid they’d found you out, that it would get back to Fritz, your being here in this house! Call my chauffeur, Pierre Grigorievitch. I’m leaving now.”
In her effort to grab her coat, she pushed past him into a small bedroom, where she had seen him deposit her wraps. There, on the table, stood an unfinished miniature painting of a pale young woman with large, almond-shaped brown eyes, her soft hair in a simple upsweep, a child in her arms, with a similar intense, unsmiling face. Marguerite stood staring at the portrait, her eyes wide. She uttered a small, sharp cry. Then, wildly, she seized the coat, bag, and hat and ran into the front room.
“It’s her!” she exclaimed. “It was for her that you wanted me to come all the way from Berlin? For her that Fritz should jeopardize his career and I my marriage? And the child? Whose child is it? Pierre Grigorievitch? His? Boris’s?”
Mutely, he nodded. There was such intense hatred in the baroness’s face that he literally could not speak She uttered a quick giggle, like a hiccup, and then, at the door, cried: “I hope the child dies! I hope Germany kills it. Indeed, I know it shall—I’ll make certain it does. Boris Kussov and that woman had no right to have a child, and they’ve no right to keep it!” She opened the door before he could stop her.
He watched from the window as the chauffeur deferentially helped her into the shining black Rolls-Royce and as the majestic car took off, incongruous on the winding street of the Künstler Kolonie. He could hardly breathe for the crushing weight of anger inside his chest. How could he have been so stupid? How could he? But then, one did not often run up against such vengeful hysterics as the Baroness von Baylen. He could not have anticipated her lasting hatred for Natalia. Yet, he had been in Paris in 1909. He should have predicted her reactio
n.
It was all his fault, he thought and crushed his hands together until the bones of his fingers hurt. He had stupidly endangered Natalia’s life! He should have realized that Marguerite was not completely normal, that her hatred of Boris and Natalia had always been tinged with derangement. Why hadn’t he analyzed the situation more clearly?
Dear God, he said to himself, I shall have to do something drastic now, or I shall never be able to sleep again.
Chapter 17
Terror had knotted her back into a tense plane, and paralyzed her thoughts. Still, there was no choice. She pressed the button of the enormous gate and waited. There could be no looking back.
It was cold for an October evening, and she pulled the fur hat over her ears, readjusting the collar of her coat. Presently a colossus of a master sergeant came lumbering across the Exerzierplatz and, seeing only a diminutive woman in elegant mink, was momentarily taken aback. Natalia raised her large eyes to him and smiled. “I have come to see Lieutenant Püder,” she said clearly, pleasantly, in her best German. “Lieutenant Heinrich Püder.”
The sergeant blinked. “And he’s expecting you, gnädige Frau?”
She nodded agreeably. The large door began to swing open, just enough to permit her access into the military enclave. She passed through and followed the sergeant across the now empty square to one of the low administration buildings. “The lieutenant is probably at dinner,” her guide said to her, showing her into a reception hall with sofas, chairs, and a billiard table in one corner. “I can fetch him for you if you’ll tell me whom to announce.”
Natalia shook her head. “I’d prefer to surprise him,” she said, and added quickly: “He didn’t know exactly when to expect me.” She smiled knowingly.
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